HP and the Mysterious Mystery of the Fifth House
by tru-ai4life
Summary: A new student appears at Hogwarts, but something strange happens that will upset the balance at Hogwarts forever. What is the Fifth House? plz r&r This will include a little bit of mystery and romance, and of course the action we love in HP!
1. Ello, Poppet

It was dark.

She could feel the coats brushing like soft fingers against her hair and bare shoulders as they shook.

The closet door put a strange muffle on the frantic shouting from the other side of it. There was her sister's voice, low, hard, bitten and indecipherable.

Then, a sudden flash of something like light but all wrong and cold and a simultaneous heavy, bone-crunching thud as something hit the paneling. Then there was screaming, high and pained and familiar in a sick was. Tru couldn't say why until she remembered an unabashed laugh, shrill and loud. The screaming drowned out Trubella's own cry of "Chas!" as she pressed her palms against the closet door. If only she could reach her, if she could touch her, everything would be alright, everything would—the screaming stopped and Tru froze.

Something warm and sticky oozed by the soles of her feet. Tru looked down. It was blood. It was like an electric shock down her spine. She snatched her hand away from the door and staggered back into the soft enfolds of the coats, as the blood continued to seep under the door.

In the shocking stillness she could hear someone rustling about the room. A shadow fell across the doorframe and paused. Then—

_Crack_

It was gone. Try stood shaking. It was silent, but she felt the shouts continue to echo about a hollow somewhere in her chest. Her mother's—instructions _Hide, Ella!_—then, screaming. Her father's—a shout, rage—nothing. Someone laughing. And—her sister… she looked down toward the dark pool, feeling sick, but saw only smoke, drifting upwards in soft whirls.

The hollow in her chest tightened. She drew in breath to scream and choked on it. She fumbled, panicking for the door—trapped, trapped—the floor was sticky, slippery beneath her feet. The doorknob, there—and then she did scream, the hot metal twisting and burning and melting into the palm of her hand. She fell back, her lungs now burning as fiercely as her hand. Down, down, into the thick, warm puddle—and—

It was dark.

Something. A throbbing. Tru opened her eyes and the thick whirl of stars spun agonizingly into place. There: Orion. There: Ursa minor.

The pain in her hand increased tenfold, a sharp excruciating ache that flared with every beat of her heart.

She could smell smoke. She tried not to think, and felt something soft brush by her legs, and a gentle touch to her hand. She jerked up, the scream faltering in her throat as her damaged lungs protested the sudden abuse.

By her side was an inky creature, seemingly formed out of the dark, lurking shapes in trees that only move in the corner of the eye. But something about it reminded her, too, of that dark fluid, creeping under the door, the cloying stickiness that now dried on the soles of her feet and hem of her nightgown. It was licking her hand, sharp fox like ears forward, and the warm length of its body nestled against her side. With each gentle touch a numb coolness caressed the burned skin soothingly. But it did nothing for the aching of her chest, for the sudden itch behind her eyes.

Suddenly, the creature's head jerked up, and sharp, slanted eyes were peering into her own. Tru's stomach twisted. The eyes… those golden eyes… they were…

"Chas?" she whispered. "Chastity?"

A/N: OK, sorry for all the gross stuff in the first chapter, but trust me! it's important to the plot. you'll see later. Leave a review if you think I should keep the story going!!!


	2. lol, I lived with wolves

**Chapter Two**

Trubella slouched on her stool, chin in her palm, elbow on the glass-top counter. She was staring out the front window to the street beyond, and the customers – oh, the customers – who passed by the shop without taking a second glance. Why exactly she had agreed to work midday every day of the week except the weekends, even she couldn't say. They were the slowest days of the week.

She cradled a magazine over her two tanned knees and brushed aside a strand of pale blonde-white hair that fell in front of her face. Something caught her eye.

Her hands. Even after so many years, they never failed to remind her of that night. The skin had healed pale and shiny, in great uneven mounds like on the moon. The thick burn scars obscured the veins beneath her skin so that there was no color to it at all – her skin was death-white.

Someone exited the door to the storage rooms and offices behind her. "Tru, your shift is up." It was her boss, a middle-aged man of ruddy complexion who always spoke kindly to her. "You can go home now. Remember that you get tomorrow off."

She slid off the high stool and placed her magazine on the counter. "Thanks, Mr. Adams. See you Monday, I guess."

"Be safe."

"I will, Mr. Adams."

She walked down the quiet street, kicking up some of the early-fallen leaves. Her apartment was a few short blocks down. It was in one of those old brick buildings, the charming ones with the wood trim and bay windows. Of course, after having lived with wolves for nearly five years, she didn't have much money, so she lived in the back of the apartment house.

Trubella walked up the three flights of stairs and pulled the heavy key out of her pocket. Her room was at the end of a cramped hallway. She could only open her door halfway, because her bed jutted out from the wall. The only window in the room looked out to a solid brick wall of another house, just two or three feet away. There wasn't even electricity in the room.

She had lit a candle and was taking off her shoes before she noticed the owl sitting on her windowsill, staring in at her with its big yellow-golden eyes. Trubella jumped and had to restrain the violent wolfish tendencies that she had adopted after many nights of running through the forest beneath the light of the moon.

The owl stared unblinkingly at her and tapped the closed window with a clawed foot. Trubella saw that there was a letter – a rather beaten-up looking letter – tied around the bird's leg. Curious, she opened the window and the bird swooped in, in a flurry of feathers. It somehow untied the letter and dropped it onto her head, then flew over to her desk and perched on the back of her chair.

Tru didn't even notice how dirty and tired the bird looked – she was staring instead at the letter. Even though the paper was dirty and ripped and warped from water in some places, the bright green ink still shone through the grime.

Miss T. Whelan

Room in the Back, Facing the Brick Wall

Maple Lined Street

Somewhere in Canada

She stared wide-eyed at the letter, before eagerly digging her finger under the seal and opening it. She read over the words numbly, eventually reading it more and more carefully at least three separate times.

But – how –

_Hogwarts? Witchcraft and Wizardry?_ Trubella felt a little light-headed. She had always known that her parents had a life they hid from their daughters, but this–

They weren't wizards. They weren't magical. They were just – they were her parents, nothing else. She stared at the letter partly in horror, but mostly in disbelief. What did this mean?

There was a piece of paper at the back of the packet; it was much smaller and in a different handwriting. Trubella peered at it in the dim light.

_Dear Miss Whelan,_

_When this letter reaches you, please report to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry_ immediately. _We have been trying to locate you for more than five years with no success. It is of utmost importance that you arrive immediately at this school._

_With regards to your family's death, we are aware of your current financial situation. Accordingly, we have enclosed in this letter the precise amount of Muggle money you will need to travel to London. When you arrive, go to King's Cross Station and take the Hogwarts Express from Platform 9¾_.

_You may send the owl back to us once you receive this message._

_Yours sincerely,_

_Minerva McGonagall,_

Deputy Headmistress

A light scratching at her door made Trubella jump again, every single hair on her body standing on end. A low mewl on the other side prompted her to run across the cramped room. She turned the knob, and a small black creature that looked like a stray street cat and a wild fox – depending from which angle you looked at it – ran in between her legs.

"Chastity!"

The animal darted fast as a river otter around the room, growled low at the owl on the chair, and jumped onto the bed to sniff at the open letter. She sniffed at it, sneezed once, twice, then turned her dark eyes on Trubella.

"I don't know what to do, Chas."

Chastity mewled again and barked.  
"You think–? I guess– " She stared thoughtfully at her pet, sitting still at the foot of her bed. "You're right, Chas. We're going to London."

A/N: sorry that it took so long for me to type this up. my teachers have been mean to me. next chappie Tru will meet some Hogwarts kids!! i promise!!! plz leave a review!!


	3. Slugface

Trubella lugged her trunk awkwardly onto the train. She'd caught onto the platform trick pretty quickly—there was just something that drew her to the wall, and from there it was easy to notice all the wizards (they had to be wizards, didn't they? They had the resonance.) vanishing into it.

The trunk was another matter. Even with Chas leaning against it as well she barely managed to push it up onto the train. It was so heavy—this was the most things she'd ever had in her life. Robes and books and cauldrons! She'd barely been able to afford it all, even with the money left over from the plane ticket it.

As they shoved the truck down the passage of the train (she should have gotten wheels), she was aware of loud shouting further ahead.

"Shut up, slugface! You think I don't know what you're up to?" The voice was angry, passionate.

"Actually, that's exactly was I think, Potty, and you'd better put your wand away. You might get hurt." This voice was slick, cool, detached, like a riverbed.

"If you ever—" The voice was cut off at this point. Tru had been so focused on their argument that she hadn't noticed that she had stepped right into the middle of it!

A boy with pale blonde hair had apparently been lunging at another, dark haired boy. He tripped over her trunk, letting out a yelp, and Tru recognized him as possessing the cool, detached voice. Now he snarled, trying to regain his feet, but Tru intervened.

"Hey!" she said, putting her hands between them, "Please stop fighting! Can't one of you show me where I can sit? Are they assigned?"

The pale boy just sneered at her, and turned into the nearest door. She couldn't help glancing after him, a little hurt. What was his problem? But the other boy, (Potty, was it?) put his hand on her shoulder. "Don't bother with him; he's an ass. Are you new here?"

Tru nodded, "Yeah, I'm from Canada, my letter said they couldn't find me until now."

"Huh, that's funny." He frowned briefly, as if puzzled, and ran a hadn through his rather messy hair. "I've never heard of that happening before. Oh well, I'm Harry." He stuck out a hand.

Tru gripped it, noticing how warm it was, and the firm way his fingers grasped hers. It was secure, like a hammock. "I'm Trubella. Well, really just Tru as long as you don't intend on making puns." He glanced curiously at her scars, but didn't say anything, for which Tru was grateful.

He laughed, and grabbed one end of her trunk. "Here, let me help you with this. You can sit with us—Ron, Hermione and me, that is."

She smiles shyly and hopefully, like the first fall drizzle, wetting the earth and giving life to buried seeds. "Alright."

A/N: Will someone pls pls pls PLEASE review? Is anyone even reading this? Say anything!! (but no flames, please!)


	4. I have pet spiders, too!

She felt a little unwelcome, walking right into a train car with people she didn't know, like a wolf entering another pack's territory alone. Her hands curled instinctively into claws, and she felt Chas bunch up next to her and grow.

But she was met only with curiosity. "Harry, _there_ you are, where– Hey, is she all right?"

Tru relaxed immediately and smiled sheepishly. "Uh, yeah, I'm fine. Just—lunch didn't agree with me, is all. You know, airplane food. Ha ha." She forced a laugh.

"Airplane food?"

"Oh! That's right. You're wizards. You probably teleport everywhere, huh?"

The girl with the brown bushy hair, who she could only assume was Hermione, said, "Apparate."

"Pardon me?"

She pushed a lock of stray hair behind her ear impatiently. "Not teleport. _Apparate._"

"Oh, uh, sorry."

An awkward silence fell over the group. Harry took the seat next to the red-headed boy – Ron – and busied himself arranging his luggage.

Tru turned to Hermione. "Is it all right if I sit?"

Hermione, who had long since turned back to the heavy, old book resting on her lap, jumped. "Oh, yes, of course."

Tru sat down, leaving as much space as possible between her and the strangely abrupt girl.

Hermione didn't turn back to her book; instead, she peered over at Tru's face, squinting her eyes. "I don't recognize you. You look old for a first year."

Harry interjected, "She said that the owl only just found her."

"Only just?" Hermione repeated, staring at Tru with a mix of surprise and suspicion. "It's magic. How can magic get lost?"

Tru felt the need to prove Hermione wrong. "I don't know, but it's true." She pulled the letter from the purse at her side and handed it to her. While Hermione skimmed the letter, she said, "I think I'm in your year, too."

"How old are you?" That was Ron.

"Sixteen since August first."

Ron nodded. "Yep, then you're in our year."

Harry just stared at her. "August first? That's the day after my birthday!"

"Wow!" True exclaimed. "What a coincidence!"

Hermione suddenly let out a high-pitched scream. "Eek!"

Ron jumped out of his seat. "What is it? Where'd it go? What happened?"

"Get it off of me!" Hermione jerked and twitched and waved her arms around. Finally, she threw something to the ground. Shaking and shuddering, she whispered, "A spider! Kill it!"

Ron was about to bring his foot down hard on the defenseless creature, when Tru held up her hand to stop him. "Wait." She stooped over and cupped her hands around the spider, and then deposited it in the hallway. "There are lots of spider in my room – well, my old room, anyway. I even named some of them."

Harry stared at her again. He smiled, a little uncertainly. "I have pet spiders, too! They used to keep me company when the Dursleys locked me beneath the stairs."

It was an instant connection.

The rest of the train ride passed by quickly, full of talking and laughing and snacking. By the time the sky outside had darkened to a deep azure blue, the color of the Thames at dusk on Midsummer's Eve, they had all become fast friends. Even Hermione seemed to have warmed up to her a little – in her way.

It was Ron who first saw the lights of Hogwarts Castle. "I can see it!" He tapped his finger against the glass. Tru could see his excited and eager face reflected in the glass.

Her three new friends immediately sprang into action. "What are you doing?" she asked, narrowly avoiding being hit by the edge of a heavy suitcase.

Harry said, "We have to get into our robes." He nearly fell over backwards as the train jerked suddenly.

In her mind, Tru pictured a school full of wand-wielding students wearing brightly patterned bath robes. She couldn't help herself, and she started giggling uncontrollably. Either they chose not to say anything about her fit, or else they didn't notice, because they each pulled out a bundle of thick black cloth.

Robes – of course. At home, her parents had worn clothing like this sometimes. She remembered once when– No. They were killed; it's no use being nostalgic.

She watched them dress, feeling helpless and more than a little left out. "I didn't get any robes," she said. There hadn't been enough money for it.

Through the thick black fabric, Hermione said, "Well, don't worry about it. I'm sure they can find you some at Hogwarts. They have everything at Hogwarts."

Ron shot Harry a significant look. "Oh no," he said, rolling his eyes. "She got Hermione started. There'll be no shutting her up now."

Hermione glared indignantly at Ron. "I don't know what you mean–"

Ron mimicked in falsetto. "Hogwarts is the best place in the world. _Did you know_ that in the Middle Ages, when the castle was just being built, that–"

"Oh, _Ron Weasley_, I do not sound like that." She was blushing a shining, bright red.

And so on, and so on. They didn't even stop bickering as the train began to slow and eventually came to a halt.

She had made it. Tru had made it to Hogwarts.

**A/N**: Yay! I got a review! thanks!! i hope you enjoyed this chappie plz r&r


	5. Lice

Tru stumbled out of the train, pushed along by the crowd. They were facing a vast lake, the waters so still that she assumed they must be frozen, until she spotted a gigantic tentacle slowly snaking up from the depths. She was so enraptured by the sight that she didn't even notice Harry signaling with his arm to someone.

The Someone tromped heavily across the grounds, drawing her attention. It was a huge man, towering many feet above her, and with hair of equal proportions. He was grinning.

"'Ey Harry, who's your friend then?"

"Hey Hagrid. This is Tru. She said it's her first year here, but what—"

"Oh, yea, I know all about it." He gave Tru a comforting pat on the back that sent her stumbling forwards into someone—it was the boy from earlier on the train! He gave her a startled look that was quickly concealed with a sneer. He almost spoke, then thought better of it, turning swiftly, and marching off into the night like a black panther, his hair gleaming like fangs. "Don't worry 'bout a thing," Hagrid finished, apparently not noticing his audience's lapse in attention.

"She really has to get sorted in front of everybody with the first years?" Harry gave her a sympathetic look that suddenly made her very nervous.

"Well, 'o course. I mean, It's the only way, ain't it?"

"Sorted?" Tru tried to hide her anxiety, although her lips curled back into a wolfish baring of teeth: threatened. "What—I mean, how…"

"Don't worry, it's just a hat. You'll see."

* * *

Seeing the hat, Tru did not feel any better. It was so dust and ragged, it almost felt menacing. There was something about the long rip that seemed almost to be smirking. She felt dread wash over her. She apprehensively watched one of the first years scratching his head. It almost certainly had lice.

_I don't belong here,_ she thought, desperately, _This is magic. I don't belong here. I'm not magic. Magic is what…_ She didn't want to finish the thought, but Chas's nose gently brushing her knuckles gave her courage. _Magic is what killed them. My family. Wasn't it?_

When the old, stern looking woman called out her name, Tru was suddenly aware of just how conspicuous she was. Not only several feet taller than all of the first years, but also in plain muggle clothes, and, she supposed the fact that Chastity was swelling inkily to the size of a bear cub, as her feelings grew more turbulent, didn't help.

The professor called her name again, and with a start, Tru realized that she had been just standing there while lost in thought. Hesitantly, she approached the stool. The hushed whispers that had been floating across the long tables suddenly went dead. Tru felt as if tiny feathers were dusting up and down her veins, pinpricks of electricity sparking from all her pores as she approached the hat, alone. Her hands shook as she placed it gently on her brow.

Immediately, inside her head, there was a warm, buzzing _Hmm…_

Her knees shook so hard she had to sit down on the stool.

_Well, this is unexpected._ The warm voice was somehow… familiar. The only thing that reassured her as she felt it shuffling objectively through her head, categorizing and generalizing her life through brief glimpses, was that she had nothing to be ashamed of.

She watched the audience, aware of a sort of double-awareness that let her see through her eyes even as she keenly experienced everything that the hat went through. She saw the concentrated faces, only a few she recognized staring her way. She saw her pack's furry muzzles and sharp eyes. She saw Harry frowning, and leaning over to whisper something to Ron. She saw her parent's faces, foggy and blurred by the passage of time and lack of photographs, smiling down at her, saying something—she couldn't hear.

There was a quiet chuckle in her head. An, _Ah, so that's it._ Then, abruptly, the warm presence was gone.

Outside, the school was still staring at her. The hat did not even twitch.

In the deafening silence, all she could here was her heart's frantic poundings.


	6. Fate

Three full minutes went by with the whole hall hushed in expectant silence. Had Tru's mind not been whirling and convulsing in the silence, she would have counted each second and probably ended up counting five instead of three. Everything outside her head, outside from under the hat, seemed to be moving very slowly. She had enough time to look at each face in that hall and register each expression, which only furthered her anxiety.

Then the whispers started.

_I knew this wasn't a good idea,_ Tru thought frantically, her fingers gripping the sides of the stools tightly. _I knew I wouldn't fit in here. Why did I come?_

Averting her eyes from the shifting sea of upturned faces, their whispered snickers like the quiet sounds of whales surfacing, Tru pulled off the silent hat and started for the door at a run. The little first years parted in front of her, their mouths open and gaping, their eyes shining like little hungry rats. They were all waiting for her to fall and then everyone would devour her alive.

The old woman with steel-grey hair barred her escape. Tru stopped short and immediately swung about, looking for another way out. Chastity swelled up beside her and advanced on the woman, growling low like far-off thunder.

Someone grabbed her arm from behind. Tru crouched low to the ground and pressed her back against the wall, teeth bared.

"Minerva." The growing crowd grew silent as a very old man with snowy white hair made his way slowly over to where Tru had stationed herself for an attack. He gently touched the arm of the old woman, and she lowered her wand. They spoke quietly, Minerva appearing very animated compared to the serene man who watched Tru with his pale eyes.

Again, the hall was silent. Tru's eyes darted from the face of the old man to the crowd of students pressing around her on all sides. She saw faces she knew – Harry and Ron and Hermione and the pale boy and other people she had seen at the station and on the train – and all of them were turned to her with a mixture of fear and animosity and curiosity.

"Yes, I see now." It was the hat.

Tru froze; all eyes turned to the stool, where the old hat rested.

It opened its tear again, revealing the pure black interior, and said in a loud voice, "Yes, I know why I couldn't sort you."

This caught the old man's interest. He walked slowly up to the low stage and placed the hat on his own head. The quiet that followed was strained; the students longed to whisper to one another, but something held them back as they watched.

Someone from the crowd said loudly in a dry voice, "This is pointless. I'm hungry."

The man lifted off the hat. "Trubella Whelan." She could nearly hear all the eyes turning in their sockets to stare at her. "Come with me," he said lightly. He didn't wait to see whether she would follow, just descended and walked down between the long tables, toward the large doors at the end of the hall.

Chastity shrank uncertainly, her ears pointed at the soft clicks of his shoes on the stone. She caught Tru's eye, and then looked toward the door inquisitively. Tru felt her confusion.

When he had almost reached the hall, Tru took in a deep breath and took the first step toward the crowd. It moved back a step. This time, though, it didn't part for her like it had for the old man. She had to squeeze her way through between bodies tall and sturdy as trees and faces as disturbing as gargoyles. On the other side, she tripped out and looked immediately toward the door. He wasn't there. She ran after him.

**A/N**: Sry i took so long to update guyz! i hate homework!! newayz, plz plz r&r! i will luv u 4ever! thx for the reviews!!


	7. Pants of Fate

Harry sat down, shoving Rob to the side to make room. "What do you make of that?"

"Of what?" wondered Ron, eating pie.

Hermoine, clever thing that she is, caught on immediately, "Well, it's all rather strange, isn't it?" She twitched her hair back behind an ear. "I mean, the sorting hat not sorting her and all. That's what it's for!"

Ron nodded. "If I were the sorting hat, I would never screw up like that, for fear they'd toss me in the fire. Or at least send me to the menders…" he shuddered. "All those pins and needles… sewing up my mouth…" As if to make up for the mere imagined scenario of being mouthless, he began to stuff things into his face at twice the speed.

Harry and Hermoine ignored him, as if they were in their own personal 'h-names' club.

Harry waved a hand dissmissively at the issue of magical hats becoming senile. "No, I meant the girl."

"Oh, yeah. Maybe she just isn't magical."

Harry daringly risked correcting Hermoine twice in a row. "No, that can't be it. She… I felt something, deep inside me, when we touched." He sighed, and his eyes were the green of a distant jungle viewed from the peak of a great volcano, with little gray birds gliding silent-winged through the sweltering heat. "And when she talked about spiders," he sighed again, the breath drawn out from him like an unrolling ball of yarn.

"Oh, that's right." said Hermoine. "Me too. Except for that bit about spiders. I supposed they wouldn't have made a mistake with the letter, after all. It's magic."

Just then the twins sat down.

"Hahaha! Hi Harry!" they said in unison, "What's with the wolf-girl and her big shadow friend, huh? Lee said you knew her."

"Yeah. Her name's Tru."

"Bit old for a first year, eh?" Fred nudged George.

George grinned. "She may be a first year, but I wouldn't mind having her in any of my classes, if you know what I mean." He winked, and Fred made a sharp wolf-bay. They laughed, and made their way back to chat with some Ravenclaw girls they knew.

McGonagall cleared her throat, and the Great Hall fell silent, as it would have from Dumbledore simply standing. "As you saw, the Headmaster is currently otherwise occupied. The start of the year speech will be given after the feast, so please remain seated once you have finished.

Ron, apparently having calmed his appetite for the moment, leaned forward to whisper conspiratorially with Harry and Hermoine. "Probably with that Tru girl!"

Hermoine rolled her eyes, "Brilliant deduction, Ron. Hadn't thought of that."

Ron smiled bashfully at her, oblivious to the sarcasm, "Yes, well, I take my pants off one leg at a time, just like everyone else."

"I was being sarcastic. And the phrase is put _on_ your pants. You'd have to be stupid to try and take your pants _off_ one leg at a time." She huffed, but Harry really didn't think that Ron could be blamed for being preoccupied with taking pants off.

Ron was beginning to turn beet red. "Well, how am I supposed to know some bloody backwards muggle saying? I wear a ROBE."

"So you don't put on or take off your pants one leg at a time?"

"No!"

Hermoine sniffed reproachfully at him, "Then you shouldn't be using the saying."

Harry, sensing the tension in the air, attempted to smooth things out. "That's okay Ron, I always put my pants on both legs at once."

Ron stiffened in his seat, apparently taking this as a attack on two fronts. "Oh! So the Great Harry Potter thinks he's too good to put pants on one leg at a time? So good that he actually wears pants!" He pushed his plates back, and stormed off to the other end of the table, squeezing in by overlapping unpleasantly with Sir Nick.

Harry stared after him, eventually venturing to turn to Hermoine, confusion written all over his face. "What was that about?" But she was picking stone-facedly at some wilted looking greens on her plate, and didn't answer.

Harry sighed, and tried not to think of long, dark hair that curled at the end like a waterfall.

a/n: sorry this took so long to update!! i was gunna do a relly long one, but i promised a friend id post the nst chp b4 she left on a trip. (to my friend: bye!! have fun!!!) (to my faithful readers: pls keep reviewing and let me no your out there! 3)


	8. The Portrait Room

MEANWHILE

The old man hadn't said a word to her ever since he told her to follow. After she caught up with him – he had been waiting for her in the torch-lit hallway, examining a tapestry – he walked briskly down a labyrinth of halls, and Tru worried that maybe he was trying to disorient her so that when he deserted her she wouldn't be able to find her way out and she would _starve to death_.

But he finally stopped in front of a statue of a gargoyle and said in a clear voice something about lemons and then stepped back. Nothing happened; Tru stepped back, too, and glanced over at the old man, but he was staring into the gargoyle's eyes serenely.

The gargoyle jumped aside in a sudden onset of sprightliness that only possesses stone statues in the nightmares of children. Tru stumbled backward and slid partway down the wall opposite the now-open stairway, her mouth gaping wide, but no sound would come out. Chas growled, fur bristling, backing up toward the shadows. _A jumping statue? What the h–_

The old man didn't even look back at her, just calmly walked forward and stepped onto the slowly revolving stairs.

Tru hesitated. She looked blindly to the right, to the left. Nothing looked familiar. There was no way she would ever find her way out of this maze alive. She looked ahead of her.

"I guess this is our only choice, right, Chas?"

Chas didn't look pleased.

Tru took a deep breath and walked forward, skirting far around the gargoyle. Chas followed, sniffing the base of the statue as she walked by – it nudged closer to her. Chas sprinted toward Tru and growled at the stone gargoyle, growing larger so that Tru was forced against the wall that they were slowly rotating past.

The old man was sitting calmly behind a large desk when she stumbled off the moving staircase.

"What was–"

Her words died in her mouth. Movement in her peripheral caught her attention and she whirled on it, growling savagely. Here was the ambush! They were going to ambush and kill her!

But there was no one, just portraits of other old people that lined the walls all the way up to the ceiling. Tru had just convinced her heart to slow down its rapid staccato when she realized with terror that it was the old people in the portraits that were moving!

They all stared down at her with grotesquely disapproving faces. A particularly bitter-looking old man peered down at her with his beetle-dark, shining eyes. His face was red and splotchy and reminded Tru of a pizza she had once left out for a week on her table. "Dumbledore," the old man in the portrait wheezed, his voice sounding like an accordion that someone had forgotten a long time ago in a dusty attic, "who is this? A trouble-maker already?"

Tru stared up at him in horror. A portrait that could move… and talk… She staggered backwards, looking at all the faces looking back at her like she was some particularly interesting act in a freak show and they were waiting for her to start biting the heads off of chickents.

She felt sick.

She bumped into something and turned around expecting to see a large portrait that had come off the wall to follow her… but it was only a chair. She sat in it gratefully. Chas had shrunk herself into a tiny kitten-sized wolf pup and crawled, shaking, into Tru's lap.

For the second time in a day, Tru sat stiffly in a chair, feeling exposed. At least this time she wasn't wearing a lice-infested hat.

And still the old man hadn't said a word. He stared at her, smiling slightly, his sky-blue eyes twinkling over his half-moon glasses, like vain stars that were trying to outshine the full moon on a warm, cloudless night. She felt like he was looking into her very soul with those eyes, like he could see her darkest secrets, the secrets she would never tell anyone, the secrets even a mother would hate to know, the secrets she didn't even know she kept.

There came a loud scraping noise from down below – the gargoyle had moved aside to let someone pass. Seconds later, Tru heard four sets of feet walking toward her chair.

This was it. She squeezed her eyes shut tight.

"Professor Dumbledore, what is going on?"

The feet stopped a bit behind her. Tru opened her eyes slowly and leaned around the high back of the chair she sat in.

The iron-haired woman from before was the one who spoke. She glanced briefly at Tru before turning her gaze back to the white-haired man behind the desk. The three people with her were new to Tru – one was a very short man – shorter than the average eleven-year-old – with a sort of pinched face; the other was a pudgy-looking woman who looked like she was usually very jolly, but now her face was looking pinched with confusion; the last was a tall man in all black with greasy hair and whose expression looked to always be sour and pinched. They were all looking rather pinched, Tru thought.

Finally the old man – Dumbledore – spoke. "Well, Professor McGonagall – Professor Flitwick – Professor Sprout – Professor Snape," he said, addressing them in turn and turning his bright eyes on each one, "the Sorting Hat was unable to Sort this girl."

There was a pause as they all stared back at him uncertainly. "Yes, we understand that, but–"

"Do you know what this means?"

Another silence, broken by a tiny squeak from Professor Flitwick. "You don't mean– Albus, you can't mean–"

"Yes," Dumbledore said, his voice calm and quiet. "The Fifth House."

A/N: i'm sooooooooooo sry dat i took sooooooo long 2 write dis chapter. plz R&R!!!!!1


	9. Wheee!

The silence seemed to stretch on like a long wolf howl, relayed across borders, packed full of foreign information and warning. Tru curled her fingers tightly into Chastity's fur, who seemed to also hear the silent warning, and had pricked her ears up.

The all started to speak at once.

"But surely, _she_ isn't---" McGonagall started, turning appraisingly towards Tru. Her eyes were not quite as piercing as the old man's, but were much harder. The old man's—wizard's, Tru released, eyes were like the ocean tides, washing gently, but persistently against a cliff, causing erosion. McGonagall's gaze was comparable to being crushed by a rock. But she had survived rocks before!

The small, mole-covered man named Flitwick, let out another shrill squeak, which caused Chas to flatten her ears with obvious pain. "Oh, my dear girl!" He was reaching out to shake her hand in congratulations, but drew it back when Chastity snapped at him. She may have been small at this moment, but her numerous needle-like teeth were clearly visible.

The woman called Sprout simply wiped her muddy palms on her robes, and turned to Dumbledore. "I'll take her in."

The commotion was sliced easily through with a small, gentle smile from Dumbledore, like a bell calling the cows home. "Thank you Pomona, but that won't be nessicary."

Tru at once felt both relieved, and strangely cold inside. So it was true. It was a mistake, she wasn't a wizard. They would send her home, where statues did not jump, at you or in any other direction. Where she knew exactly where all the streets led.

And the exact parameters of her room. Five steps one way, four the other. Like her life. From this hard chair, in the tower, in Dumbledore's room, she could suddenly see her life for exactly what it was. Living with wolves had been better. At least then she'd had family.

She thought fleetingly of the two boys fighting in the train compartment, before catching Dumbledore's eyes on her, peering knowingly and kindly through half-moon spectacles. The other teachers were staring at her with a kind of skeptical awe. "I'll be taking her as my pupil," he said.

"Although, of course, she will still attend the regular courses with her year. I feel confident that she will succeed once she has begun to master control."

Something loosened in Tru's heart. Then panic set in. "Courses? Magic courses? But I've never—"

Dumbledore waved a hand airily, "That will be all, Miss Whelan. Try not to over-worry yourself." He added in a wise whisper, "I've heard it causes wrinkles."

Tru clung to the edges of the chair, staring uncomprehendingly at Dumbledore, with the same wide eyes a wall might use, while being charged by a rhino, if walls had eyes. He smiled, and Tru was inclined to go against her instincts, and consider it _not at all kindly_, as she saw his hand resting lightly on a long stick, and now the chair was scooting persistently out from underneath her. "But—I don't even have a wand!"

With one final wiggle, the chair escaped from under her, and Chasity scrambled ferret-like up to her shoulder. She found herself being directed out the door by multiple pairs of the Professor's hands, even as Dumbledore said, "Please do not damage your skin over anything. It will all be taken care of. Enjoy the feast! Er, what's left of it."

The door shut behind her.

Tru stood, shaking a moment. She didn't like this feeling, this being stared at like some kind of novelty. She realized that the staircase was already gliding her downwards. Obeying some natural instinct, or long suppressed impulses from infrequent mall trips, she turned, and began to walk in the opposite direction, heading back towards the door. Her footsteps were as light as they had been on the forest floor. She tucked a few long strands of hair back behind her ear, and leaned in close to listen.

"Her father? But, Albus, doesn't that mean…"

"He had converted long before, Pomona. I believe that is one of the reasons they were in hiding. And very deep in hiding, I might add. Never before has a Hogwart's owl been delayed."

"Not deep enough, it seems."

Tru bit her lip, hard, and felt her fingers curl in, as they always did when the memories came flooding back. She must have made a noise, for there was a sudden silence within the room. Had they discovered her?

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then the stairs beneath her feet flattened, and she suddenly found herself spinning down a long, terrifying slide. She pressed her heels desperately to the smooth marble like a cat trying to hook its claws into a curtain it was falling down. So it was a trap after all? Or perhaps they had decided that she wasn't trustworthy—or maybe this was how they did punishment at the school?

Faster and faster she spun, until like a blur she was the gargoyle leap gracefully out of the way, and she closed her eyes, bracing for impact onto—a cushy pile of purple bean bags?

Tru buried her head into Chastity's side, shutting everything out.


	10. Vestisio!

Tru lay curled up in the beanbags for she didn't know how long. Chastity's fur was soft and familiar, the only thing that reminded her of home.

There was a faint scuffing sound, but even though her instincts screamed for her to look up at the intruder, to protect herself, she merely nestled closer into the beanbags.

"Oi! What do you think you're doing, in the hallway like this?" The boy looked around at the turbulent sea of plump, marshmallow-like beanbags.

Tru looked up. That voice– It was the boy from the train! "Er, Slugface, was it?" she said, sounding hopeful.

But rather than turning his frown upside down and extending a hand of friendship and offering her some pumpkin pie and a glass of milk, he sneered at her. "_Slugface_? Oh, I get it; you've been hanging around with Potty and his wee little friends, haven't you?"

"Well." Chastity had begun to grow and was growling at the boy. "Well, I only just got here. I used to live in Canada," she said brightly.

"I don't _care_ where you used to live," he snapped. "My name _isn't_ Slugface." Obviously this was something that was bothering him quite a lot.

"Well, what's your name?"

He gave her a look that clearly communicated to her that he would like nothing better than to rip off her face and shout _HOW DO YOU LIKE THAT, THEN?_ But instead he said, "Draco Malfoy" and gave her a strange look. She noticed then that his eyes were a cool grey, the color of the sky on a cloudy morning just before dawn, the color of hidden kindness.

"I'm Tru Whelan," she said when he didn't prompt her.

"What kind of name is _True_?" He took evident pleasure in mocking her. "Were your parents on drugs when they had you or something?"

"My parents are dead."

"Oh."

There was an awkward silence.

"But, anyway, it's short for Trubella."

"Oh," he said. "Well."

The beanbags seemed to swallow her up, crushing her on all sides with their plushiness. "Can you help me up?" She held out her hand.

He recovered from the awkward moment and stared disdainfully at her hopeful hand. "No, I will not help you."

"You're really rude."

Draco was bristling now. He crossed his arms and stared down his nose at her, his face framed by a torch on the wall behind his head – he resembled a young, displeased god. "Doesn't the name 'Malfoy' mean anything to you?"

She looked at him with confusion written all over her delicate features. "No? Should it?"

He sneered. "What are you, a Mudblood or something?"

She blinked. "What?"

"You are, aren't you? Your parents are– were Muggles, weren't they? Filth. I can't believe that they're letting your lot into this school."

"I– What? No. My parents weren't Muggles, I don't think." She screwed her eyes up in concentration. "Wait. What's a Muggle?"

Draco sighed in annoyance.

Unfortunately for him, while he was being so haughty and condescending, he didn't notice the stone gargoyle that had been advancing upon him menacingly. Tru noticed it though, and her eyes widened.

Draco stopped in mid-sentence and turned to look over his shoulder–

And jumped about three feet into the air, flattening his back against the opposite wall in obvious fear. "T– take her. Take the girl. She's new here. Who cares about new people? I'm a good student, I would never hurt gargoyles, ha ha ha." He laughed nervously.

The gargoyle never stopped advancing. Draco turned his head away and screwed his eyes shut tight. When the statue was right in front of him, it stopped. "Draco Malfoy," it said in a surprisingly unthreatening and kindly voice.

Draco opened one eye. "Dumbld– I mean, Professor Dumbledore?"

"Yes." The stone turned its weathered face briefly toward Tru. "I would appreciate it if you wouldn't call other students that horrible name."

"Y– Yes, sir."

"She is actually a pureblood, like yourself. Very much further from being the child of Muggle parents than you could imagine." His voice trailed off thoughtfully. Then he added in brighter tones, "Well, I'll let you two alone to make friends." The gargoyle leapt back to its station in front of the door to Dumbledore's office.

Draco stayed pressed against the wall for a few minutes more, calming down as slowly as a man who just escaped a hanging because the rope was not strong enough to hold his weight and so sent him crashing to the floor with only a mild rope burn.

Finally, he turned to Tru. "Let's go," he said, his voice still shaky.

Tru pulled herself out of the beanbag heap – which disappeared as soon as she was standing – and followed silently after Draco. Chas padded beside her, her sharp claws, which were always ready to tear at arteries and the jugular and any other weak points of the human body, clicked quietly on the stone.

"So," Draco said after an incredibly awkward interval of silence. "So, which House are you in?"

"I didn't ever get Sorted," she reminded him quietly.

"Oh. That's right."

Tru noticed now that he was quite a bit taller than her, lankily built; he reminded her of a cello player, with graceful hands and a hunched figure.

He glanced at her quickly. With an obvious effort at attempting to make nice, he said, "So, if you aren't in a House, where are you going to sleep?"

Tru stopped in her tracks. "Oh my God!" she shouted. "Where _am_ I going to sleep?" She turned around uncertainly and stared down the dark hallway where they had just come from. She doubted she would be able to find her way back to Dumbledore's office. Chas swelled into the size of a large bear.

Draco eyed Chas warily, but to his credit, he didn't back away. He watched her slowly giving into the panic, like a ship at sea in a storm, finally being tipped over and its masts swinging into the water. Finally, reluctance clearly in his voice, he said, "Er, I guess – and I know I will sorely regret this later, and by later, I mean a few seconds after I say this – I guess that you could come sleep in my room."

Tru stopped and turned toward him. "Eww–"

"_NOT LIKE THAT_," Draco said, waving his hands desperately to ward off the advancing Chas. "I mean, in my room – the _common room_ of Slytherin, my house."

"Oh. Well, that's all right, then." She smiled, and it shone upon Draco like a brilliant sunrise after months and months of endless rain and clouds. "Thanks."

Draco took her the rest of the way to the Slytherin dungeons in silence. "No need to remember the password," he said when they reached the blank wall that magically disappeared as he uttered the secret word in his soothing voice, "because I expect that Dumbledore will right this tomorrow."

"So, where do I sleep?" She looked around the room; it was sparsely furnished, a faint greenish tinge to the light like a sunrise shining through spring leaves.

Draco gestured impatiently at a couch in front of the dying fire.

"But– but I'll be so cold."

He pulled his wand out of his pocket it one sudden movement and waved it jerkily at the couch. "_Vestisio_!" A large pile of blankets appeared on the couch. And without another word, without hearing her grateful words of thanks, he turned and walked up the stairway to the dorms.

A/N: if ne of u were curious, vestis is latin 4 blanket. look it up in a dictionaree if u dunt bleive me


	11. Symbolic

Tru divided the pile of blankets in half, dumping one half on the floor for Chastity—she was her sister, after all—and curling under the other half. She lay for a while in silence, trying to regulate her breathing, but after a while, Chas looked up at her in annoyance, obviously not fooled. She sighed. "I'm sorry Chas, I wish I could sleep, too. It's just… all so very confusing. Everyone acts so strangely."

She hugged one balled up blanket to her chest. "Oh! Chas, I wish you could talk, tell me what to do. I wish our parents were here. I wonder if they were really wizards. I can't believe they never told us."

Feeling a sudden flow of guilt between the empathetic bond she shared with Chastity, her eyes widened. "You knew? And you didn't tell me either!" She gasped, her surprised betrayal flooding into her aura like an electrical power surge that has broken a socket.

Chastity seemed to shrink into the shadows, letting out a high, whining noise. Her sadness and guilt flooded the link, dampening Tru's anger—but not before she accidentally set the blanket she was holding on fire. She screamed in surprise, and threw the blanket off her. Immediately Chastity crowded over it, stomping and rolling to smother the flame.

"Hey! Quit all that racket out there!" The nasal yell came from one of the dormitories.

Shaking badly, Tru hugged Chastity uncomfortably tight, as if her arms held the strength of a hundred crocodile jaws. She stared at the wisps of smoke, simultaneously reminding her of That Night, and of Draco's eyes. She emotions that rose confused her, until Chas gently licked her cheek, and she fell back onto the couch, immediately asleep.

Tru dreamed that she was underwater, but that the water was made of transparent ice cream. It was cold, so cold, but the only was to breathe was to eat the ice cream. More and more, until it felt like her stomach was going to explode. Gagging, she reached her hand up, up, and even though she could see straight through the ice cream, she couldn't see the sky or the sun.

Suddenly, her hand was grabbed, and she slid slickly through the ice cream sea, and couldn't imagine what kind of transparent stains she must be getting. The arm that grabbed her seemed to have stretched impossibly, but she had finally reached the surface, and was pulled into a giant purple pie tin, with a dark maroon piecrust already in place.

She turned to face her savior, but it was figure she had never seen before, so tall that he stretched to the sky, and his head blocked out the view of the sun, but the snow-white, silk skin on his scalp seemed to shine in place of it. He had little slits like scissor-cuts for a nose, and his pupils were sharp like knives, and there was a faint, lighting-shaped scar over his left lack-of-eyebrow.

She stood stationary, as if her body had as bad a brain-freeze as her head did, and stared up at him. His hand stretched towards her like a tidal wave, the long fingers like bendy straws.

That was when she saw that the palms of his hands were scarred, skin twisted, just like hers. Drawn like a magnet to a refrigerator, she reached out, trying to clasp his hand.

But he was suddenly being shrinking—no! He was falling through the bottom of the pie tin… and there was a face there. As the top of his shining head disappeared through the pie's mouth, like some kind of reverse birth, she felt a great sadness well up in her, like a part of her had broken, like a car with a flat tire. Without his shining sun-head, the sky grew dark, and she shivered.

As she stared at the pie tin's face, it grew more and more familiar, the blueberry eyes especially. And as it grew more familiar, she felt the sadness washed away like grime on a car window by a homeless person hoping for change. There was a growing warmth in her chest, that radiated out like something radioactive, emitting a faint glow on everything around her.

In this faint light, she noticed that the pie tin had a long, white beard.

The pie tin began rocking back and forth rapidly.

Tru sat up, staring straight into something green, that at first she mistook for the Slytherin lighting, but was in actuality one Harry Potter's eyes. Their faces were only inches apart.

"Who would put hair in a pie crust?" was the first thing she said.

She heard someone whisper, from the shadows, "Obviously confounded."

"We're rescuing you!" said Harry, his breath a rush of warm, minty air, brushing her face like siamese cats.

A/N: a thousand and one thanks to everyone who keeps reading, all dese updates hav been just 4 u! pls review!

Special note to theguyman: I dont undestand what ur saying. whats sub-par? did u like it or knot?? Thx for reviewing tho!


	12. Confrontation!

"Harry?" Tru started to say, but Harry clamped a clammy, seaweed-like palm over her mouth. He pressed one finger to his lips, so much like a golden-brown fish stick.

_I must really be hungry_, she thought.

Harry slowly took his hand away from her mouth, and she whispered in quiet tones fit for a funeral, "Harry, what are you doing here? I didn't know you were in Slytherin!"

"I'm not," he said, the fire glinting dangerously on his glass lenses. "We're here to rescue you!"

"Well," Tru said uncertainly. Over his shoulder, she could see Ron and Hermione standing very ill at east, looking over every few seconds to the stairs Draco disappeared up earlier that night. She waved at them. When neither waved back, she looked at each one of them; they were all looking rather pinched. It must be something in the food; she was suddenly grateful that she hadn't had any dinner. "Oh!" she said suddenly, making them all jump." I had the weirdest dream ever. See, there was something about ice cream–"

"We don't have much time, Harry," Hermione hissed, sending a particularly panicked look to the stairs.

"I don't really need to be rescued, you know. It's really nice of you, but sleeping on the couch suits me just fine–"

Harry's hand clamped over her mouth again, and they all froze like some thieves in the middle of rifling through someone's dresser drawers full of underwear, hoping to find hidden caches of money. Tru heard the shuffling, too; very faint, just up the stairway, around the corner, something was in the shadows.

But no one appeared. The others didn't let their guard down, though. Harry pulled her up and started dragging her toward the magical wall that was the entrance to the Slytherin common room.

She dug in her heels when they reached the first step. "_Wait_, Harry. Slugf– I mean, _Draco_ invited me down here; it would be really rude for me to just go without telling him." He tugged at her again, and her feet slipped on the stone steps that had been smoothed down by centuries of hurrying students' shoes, all for this one night, this one unfortunate event.

Tru let out a loud squeal of fear as her hip bruised like an old fruit on the sharp outcropping of a step.

Harry growled in annoyance and lifted her up in his arms, and Tru couldn't help thinking of those cheesy romance novel covers. Except Harry wasn't exactly very tall and muscle-bound with long, flowing blond hair.

"What are you doing here, _Potter_?"

Harry froze. In the scuffle, they hadn't heard the footsteps racing down the stairs behind them. He turned around slowly. Tru had her arms wrapped around his neck; she smiled uncertainly at Draco, and her teeth shone in the darkness like a lighthouse calling the sailors home from a long night's fishing.

"She isn't a Slytherin, Malfoy. What did you think you'd accomplish, anyway, bringing her down here?" He sneered and for a moment, he and Draco looked like photo negatives of each other – well, their hair colors were inverted, anyway. They both wore the same sneer, too. But Draco's teeth weren't black, like they would be in a photo negative.

"What, do you think I'm trying to _corrupt_ her or something?" He glared at them contemptuously. "Because if that's the case, I would just send her with you to the common, boorish, inbred house that we commonly call Gryffindor."

Harry leapt forward, still holding Tru in his arms. "Who are you to call us inbred?" he snarled. "Everyone knows that all the pureblood families are incestuous. Marrying cousins and–"

Draco pushed his wandtip against Harry's forehead. "Say any more, Potter," he said, very quietly, his lips hardly even moving, "and I swear that I will blow your sodding brains out. I know spells, I've learned spells that you can't even imagine, " he said, barely contained rage quaking in his voice. "You shouldn't say such things about things that you could never understand–"

"Please," said Tru, her soft voice wafting over the tense scene like some calming smoke, a fog, a perfume. "Please, Draco. Harry was worried about me, that's all. I don't think he meant to start a fight."

His grey eyes darted to hers for a moment, then focused back on Harry and narrowed. "Let her down, Potter."

Harry lowered her to the ground slowly, legs first so that she could stand on her own.

"Now get out."

Harry's jaw tensed and Tru could see the muscles working, like the muscles in the arms of stone masons, carving their rock. "I won't–"

"_Go_, Potter, or else you'll be in detention for the rest of your life. With Snape. And you know how much he loves giving you detention."

This seemed to mean something to Harry. He remained frozen for a minute, glaring at Draco, then he looked at her apologetically. "I'll make sure that you won't have to sleep here tomorrow night, okay?"

"Sure."

"_Go_."

Harry, Ron, and Hermione walked slowly out the door, glancing back a few times as though they thought that Draco would start drinking her blood the moment they looked away.

When the stone wall rematerialized, Tru turned to Draco; he lowered his wand. A slow grin crept on his face, like reverse molasses. He seemed to like her a lot more now, wasn't short with her at all.

"Are you hungry, Tru, was it?"

"Yes, a bit: I didn't get any dinner."

Draco grinned wider. "Hold up. I think I have a pomegranate somewhere."

A/N: i hope u ppl reading this r enjoying it. i'm enjoying writing it!!!! PLZ R&R!!!!!!!!!!!!!


	13. More About Hair

Harry, Ron and Hermoine managed to make it back to the Gryfindor common room safely, with the help of the invisibility cloak and the Map. They did have one close call when Ron tripped over Mrs. Norris.

Hermoine was of course ready with a spell, but luckily Ron had already accidentally sent her flying into a cupboard. Harry closed the door, and for the rest of the way, they had to suffer Hermoine's worried ramblings about whether Mrs. Norris would be alright, if anyone would find her. "She's just a cat really, you know, I know you hate her, and I do too! But.. it's just her job, maybe she's got a sweet side, do you suppose she likes milk, or yarn, or rats, like Crookshanks does? Oh, how will she get food? The castle's so big, what if it's a moving cupboard like the vanishing one? Oh dear!"

Once, when Finch was coming around the corner, Harry and Ron had to clap their hands over her mouth. After that she was silent.

She was even silent when they climbed back through the portrait hole, the Fat Lady yawning and stretching like a huge, pink boulder.

Ron scratched the back of his head, where his hair blossomed like a huge meteor basking in sunlight. "Er, look Hermoine, sorry 'bout that, but we had to—" Ron had forgiven Hermoine and Harry, after being reluctantly convinced that Harry didn't actually wear pants (he'd had to change before having that conversation) and that Hermoine was probably just subconsciously angry at Harry for having been corrected twice and that she didn't mean it.

Hermoine, however, was still full of strange rage, like blue fire. "Harry I can't believe you dragged us out like that! Do you know what could have happened? And she wasn't even kidnapped! I thought you swore you saw Draco smothering her in huge purple pillows, before dragging her away!"

Harry rubbed his scar. "I did! She was probably just confounded. And I could've done something about it, if he hadn't caught us."

"She's always been like that, Harry! A complete airhead! Right, Ron?" Hermoine tugged at her hair irritably. "Although she does have rather nice hair."

Ron considered what sort of wrath he might face if he disagreed, and considered it comparable to the wrath a Muggle plumber might face for causing a sewage explosion on a front lawn, and then charging the residents of the house a six hundred dollar bill, and telling them they'd have to call someone else to fix the explosion, that you were only equipped to fix blockages. "Yeah, didn't seem like there was much up there, Harry. And her hair was nothing compared to yours, Hermoine." He sighed, the sigh of a dreamer imaging the foggy air slicing upwards through the cold night to touch the stars.

Harry kicked a chair over, angrily! "He's up to something! I know it!"

A/N: O no!! unlucky 13. I made it a short 1, just in case  
so what do u guys think?? I no some of u r watching and havent reviewed! pls review!!


	14. Sod off!

Tru woke up the next morning when someone purposefully bumped into her couch hard enough that she was knocked off onto the floor. She rolled over, confused and disoriented, expecting to bump into the wall of her old apartment – instead, she almost rolled into the dying fire.

She sat up and looked around. Draco was nearing the magical wall, laughing with some of his friends.

"Draco!" she shouted, slightly relieved.

He froze, didn't look around, his shoulders hunched like someone who is caught after stealing a midnight snack from the refrigerator. His friends continued on a few steps, then noticed he had fallen behind, and turned around. They didn't notice her, as she was mostly hidden behind the couch, and were instead looking at Draco's expression with wide eyes.

Very slowly, he turned to look at her. "Sod off, bitch," he said, just loud enough to carry over the slowly crowding common room.

Tru felt his hostility toward her like an icicle hammered through her heart and out the other side of her ribcage, slowly melting, but the whole always gaping. "I– But– But didn't that pomegranate we shared last night mean anything to you?"

A girl to his side raised her eyebrows and gazed at Tru icily. "What pomegranate?"

Draco said in a low voice, "Oh Merlin," and turned away from them all. "I'm hungry, I'm going to breakfast."

His friends eventually followed, rocks falling after the larger boulder in an avalanche, and the girl was the last to go, finally tearing her eyes away from Tru's face. The common room was silent again. Tru stood up slowly, and Chas crawled out from beneath a pile of blankets, looking worried.

"Well, I'm hungry, too," Tru said.

The dining hall was packed and noisy. Tru stood in the doorway uncertainly, looking for faces she knew. She saw Draco first, but he gave her a rather rude gesture. On the other side of the hall, she saw Ron's bright red hair, and decided to head over to them, her _true_ friends.

"Er, hi," she said, holding Chas draped around her neck like one of those dead foxes that ladies of high class usually wear – except that Chas was moving and breathing and was also very hungry and eyeing a plate of bacon.

Numerous pairs of eyes turned toward her, her soft, bell-like voice seeming to demand attention, even though that wasn't her intention.

Hermione looked up first, scowled and turned back to her plate as though she was afraid her food would start walking off with quick, spider-like legs down the table.

Ron looked up next, eyes widening, and stared for a long time at her raven-dark hair, flowing down over her shoulders like a finely woven veil of raven feathers. He blushed and said, "Hullo, Tru," and only turned back to his food when Hermione accidentally spilled her grape juice on his lap. He jumped up and fell over backwards as his knees caught on the table's edge. "Bloody hell, Hermione!"

"Oops! here, let's go clean you up," Hermione said.

Harry was slightly delayed in responding to her greeting by the spectacle his friends put on, the clowns before the main act in a circus. But as Ron scurried away with both hands over the front of his pants and Hermione stormed after him, Harry turned around to see her. "Hi, Tru," he said.

"Er," Tru said, looking nervously after Hermione and Ron. "Will he be all right?"

"Yeah."

"Oh." She looked around and caught a few groups of people staring at her. "Er, can I sit here? I don't have anywhere else to go…"

"Oh, sure," Harry said, scooting aside so she could avoid the wet spot on the chair, like a blood stain in the side of a warrior who has just finished a battle, carrying home the head of his vanquished enemy.

The first thing Tru did was to put together a plate of bacon and eggs for Chas, who immediately started devouring her meaty offerings like a hungry gorilla.

Harry watched with a combination of fear and disgust, but he said, "So, er, did you sleep all right last night?" Tru looked over at him and he blushed.

"Yes, I did, thank you for asking."

"So, Malfoy didn't give you a hard time or anything?"

Tru blinked. "Draco? Oh no, no no no. He was very polite; he gave me a pomegranate."

"He– What?"

"He gave me a pomegranate," Tru said more slowly.

Before Harry could respond, there was a quiet cough from behind them. Tru realized that the whole hall had fallen silent. They both looked over their shoulders slowly.

Dumbledore stood behind them, smiling quietly, his blue eyes mirroring the vibrant blue of the sky above, the same blue as a jumper given by an aunt to a new baby boy. "Good morning, Tru."

"Good morning, sir," she said hesitantly, feeling her way through this surprising situation like a blind person trying to cross the street filled with silent cars and without the cheerful _pip-pip_ of the signal.

"Would you come with me, please?"

Harry said quickly, "She didn't know that she wasn't supposed to sleep there, Professor; she's new here and so–"

Dumbledore laughed softly. "No, Harry, it's nothing like that." He turned to Tru, smiling the mysterious smile of a new grandfather. "Tru, come with me, won't you? This is private business."

She looked at Harry and they shrugged – innocent accomplices. She followed after him, running slightly – he walked quickly for such an old man.

As soon as they were out of the hall, Tru said, "Sir, what is it? What have I done? Am I really not magical after all? Do I have to go back to Canada?"

"Not at all, Tru," he said. "No, today we're going wand shopping!"

a/n: sorri that took sooo long 4 me to update, but im v busy. PLZ R&R!!!!!! I WILL LUV U 4EVER!!!!!!


	15. Let's get some wands!

Tru clapped her hands together in excitement like a tree falling over. "A wand! A wand! And that will let me do magic?"

Dumbledore, still stalking so quickly across the paths that it was like he was riding a bicycle shaped like walking legs, considered this. "Well, of course, you've always been able to do magic, but yes, it will considerably enhance your magic action potential."

"So, wands are like a funnel. A funnel of power. Like the kind you use to bake?"

Dumbledore seemed to consider this. He stared down at Tru, and she felt her cheeks flame like a lion's mane. "Er. Yes. That's a very… creative way of putting it. And, I suppose in this metaphor, your magical energy would be the ingredients, and the finished brownies or fudge or so forth would be the resulting spell?" He tapped his chin with his long forefinger, like a beetle moving its mandible. "Yes! I see! That's very astute of you. Of course, most spells can be cast in a much shorter span of time than it takes to bake chocolate chip cookies. Unless, one was using a chocolate chip cookie spell, but that would be making a circular metaphor, wouldn't it?"

"Yes," said Tru, blankly.

"We're here!" Dumbledore exclaimed, suddenly.

"Where?" said Tru, looking around. They had only just made it off the grounds, it seemed, into a small village looking place. It reminded Tru of the inside of a snow globe, only without the snow.

"Precisely seven-eighths of the way there!" He placed a hand lightly on her shoulder, and gripped it like a criminal lobster. "Brace yourself, if you don't mind."

"Where is it that we're going, sir? Some kind of wand mall?"

"…Yes," said Dumbledore, and suddenly Tru was being squashed and stretched through places of infinitesimal smallness, like atoms, or baby ants. She could feel Chastity warping through her insides and back out again, the only stable, unmoving thing seemed to be Dumbledore's hand on her shoulder. She focused on it, and normality (or what passed for it) returned.

"Here we are!" Dumbledore said with unnecessary cheerfulness, like a bird trained to be an alarm clock.

Tru looked up at the shop that was suddenly before them. She felt suddenly swollen like a jelly dounut, filled with blueberry apprehension, and Chastity tucked her head under Tru's chin. It was a dingy old place apparently called 'Olivander's,' and Tru felt some concern for her dust allergies as they walked in. A tiny bell tinkled somewhere in the shop, like a fairy's dying plea. She wondered if Dumbledore was taking her to this run-down shop because she wasn't good enough for a real wand, wasn't good enough even to be put in a House—but no! She fought off the gloom, like a cat licking milk from her whiskers. He probably just knew about her financial hardships.

Just then a decrepit old man slid on a hovering ladder around the corner of a bookshelf stacked with boxes (why all the boxes, Tru wondered? Are they moving?).

"Hello Olivander. I'd like you to find this young lady a wand." Dumbledore promptly sat down in a chair in the corner like a knitting grandmother, and opened up one of the extraordinarily old magazines sitting next to it. He was encased in a cloud of dust.

Tru felt abandoned, like a child on a doorstep, to this old man who was peering so closely at her face she found herself hoping that none of the oil on his skin would rub off on hers. She had never gotten a pimple and hoped to keep it that way.

"Is that so?" he said, and promptly sped around another corner of the shelves. How can all of these old people move so quickly, Tru wondered. It must be magic, she concluded.

"Sir," Tru started hesitantly, "I don't see any wands here, are you sure this is the right place?" But Dumbledore was extremely absorbed, like a lion eating its kill, in the magazine, '_Accio Scandal!'_ Tru tilted her head to read the date on it. October, 1791.

Suddenly Olivander was back like a pizza thrown into a clown's face!

a/n: i think i might b a lil feverish, srry if dere r any typos.

pls pls pls, will some1 let me no theyre out dere?

it feels like no1 cares


	16. KABLOOMERS!

Tru nearly wet her pants in fright! "omg!" she shouted, falling backwards onto the floor!

"I think," wheezed the decrepit Ollivander, like a lorry (a/n dat's british 4 truck) that was slowly running out of gas while struggling up a steep hill, "I know where to start." He handed her a long tapered stick.

She looked up at him, as uncomprehending as someone traveling in a remote country where no one speaks English and where they all hate English-speakers.

"Well, go on, give it a wave," he said impatiently, his jowls quivering, reminding Tru very much of an excited rooster.

She did.

The wand tip glowed a bright white, then a wind started up around her and then she felt the connection, and something told her to wave it at one of the walls of the store. The boxes that haphazardly lined the unfortunate wall exploded into shredded bits of box, splintered wood, and white hot metal.

"Hmm," Ollivander said, scratching a sore on his jaw, like a boiling pit of lava resting in the crater of a recently erupted volcano. "Yes, Professor Dumbledore told me about you before you came." He glanced over significantly towards Dumbledore who was just then turning his tabloid upside-down and peering closer at a picture. "Yes, he told me quite a bit about you, Trubella Whelan."

"What– what did he tell you?" Tru asked fearfully. She could just imagine Dumbledore telling Ollivander to go easy on her because she would never have any magical powers and Dumbledore didn't want to be the one to break it to her, he thought Ollivander would have more experience in that area.

"That it would be a challenge to find you a wand–"

She knew it; her worst fears, realized!

"–that would be able to contain your chaotic powers."

"What?"

"That is not important." He disappeared around the corner in a blur, like a praying mantis, and came back gripping another couple of boxes of wands in his grasping claws. "Here, try these," he said, dumping them onto the table in front of her.

More than an hour later, the destruction was complete. All the wands except the ones that Ollivander had brought out for her to try were either in little splintered, chocolate-like bits or sprawled on the floor and stuck under small places that would be impossible to retrieve them from.

Tru stood where she was after testing the last one, her raven hair frizzled out around her like she was a lightning strike survivor.

"Yes, yes, yes, just what I thought," Ollivander said quickly under his breath, eying her closely and with a kind of hunger.

"What is it?" Her voice was a small kitten's.

He began to pace erratically, plowing through the piles of destroyed boxes and wands, muttering to himself and to her. "Yes, I should have known. Yes, all of the wands seemed to fall under your power, and it makes perfect sense!" He stopped and turned to her. Picking up one of the wands from the pile, he thrust it into her hands and said, "Say _Aguamenti_!" (a/n it's the spell for makin water)

"Say– what?"

"Just say it! _Aguamenti_!"

"Ag– _Aguamenti_."

The wand sputtered angrily and a fire burned the tips of Tru's fingers like a forgotten burning match. "Ow!" she wailed.

"Yes, yes, yes, just what I thought." He handed her another wand, and she did the same thing.

This time a strong jet of water spurted across the room and broke a pane of one of the grimy windows. Tru made and "o" face, frozen. "I did magic!" she exclaimed! Chastity murred in pleasure.

"Yes, of _course_, you did magic," said Ollivander, but his voice was more excited than annoyed. "Of _course_."

"Is it as you suspected, Mr. Ollivander?"

"Yes, exactly so, Albus."

"What? I don't understand! What were you expecting?"

Ollivander turned his eyes to her and smiled like a new uncle. "You are a very rare, case, Tru," he murmured reverently. "Very rare, indeed. You see–" He coughed into his hand and Tru thought she could hear the dust bunnies forcing their way up his throat. "–you see, you can use all wands. They will all obey you, although as you saw, they won't always work for certain spells."

Tru's burned fingers hung in the room like an unspoken, ticking bomb.

"But this makes my job very difficult, as it will take a lot of training and practice for you to be able to use just _one_ wand. Until that time, you must use multiple ones, each one for a different type of spell, each one with its own strengths and weaknesses, much like you, Tru."

"So… I'll be the only person at school with more than one wand?" she queried, turning to Dumbledore.

He smiled mysteriously, his lips pressing together to form a closed chasm, still expelling its darkness.

"Yes, you will," Ollivander answered for him. "But you will also be very lucky in many areas, many areas that will make up for the awkwardness of the social situation."

Tru didn't like the thought of being the only anything back at Hogwarts; she was having hard enough of a time fitting in at all, being Canadian and all. But…

The wands all seemed to speak to her, radiating each one a different force, a different feeling, a different smell, a different emotion. She ran her hand over each one and felt a different shiver go through her body, touching each one.

Finally she said, "How do we decide which ones I am to take home?"

a/n: im feling relli sik rit now sorri if dis chappie is really bad. ))): PLZ R&R PLZ PLZPLZPLZ PZLP LZ!!!!!!!


	17. Wand to play?

Harry Potter, Ron, and Hermione were in Charms class learning the charm for unsticking zippers.

"The emphasis in the spell word is similar to last year's charm for untying knots but remember, the wand must _zip _up and down!" Professor Flitwick's breathless squeak ran together like a balloon deflating. Sometimes Ron suspected that the only reason Hermoine did so well in this class was her amazing tolerance and talent for deciphering high pitch noises. She quietly translated for them.

Just then, Tru stumbled in. Her breathless, disheveled appearance gave everyone flashbacks to their days as first years, arriving late to every class after being caught in a giant spiderweb, or encased in one of the suits of armor, or stuck in a shrinking hallway. She blushed to see everyone's eyes on her, and attempted to tuck some of the her messy curls back into place, but was hindered by the heavy bag in her arms. It was as if it was filled with rocks, or infinitely compressed rhinoceri. It yanked her arms back to the ground, and she stumbled. But she took some comfort in recognizing Harry and his friends. She limped over to them, in the sudden silence on the classroom, smiling uncertainly. 

Professor Flitwick, unable to see what all the commotion was about from behind his desk, reminded everyone of the incantation. "Desino cohero, everyone!"

Harry watched Ron make a futile swirling motion with his wand that twisted their zipper into a knot, but was distracted as Tru accidentally bumped him with her elbow. She was going through her bag, which was brimming with long boxes. "What're those?"

Tru blushed more deeply. She felt her heart jump like a rabbit spotting a hawk that had somehow managed to come within ten feet without notice. She stumbled over her answer, "These? They're just, um, some s-supplies, you know? Got to be prepared for everything." She quickly snatched up what she hoped was a likely box for Charms, as Chastity curled up over the rest, to hide them from sight. She couldn't let anyone know that she had more than one wand! What would they think? Her skin prickled uncomfortably with the lie.

Harry was frowning at her, so she quickly opened up the box, and pulled out the wand (what had that old man said about this one? she couldn't remember?) "What's going on?" she whispered to Harry. Seeing Ron, she attempted to make the same motion--but Harry caught her wrist!

His hand covered hers as he shook his head. "Here, you missed it, but the motion is like _this._" Their linked hands and the wand made a smooth run up and down the zipped. "Now, say the spell.." 

Tru swallowed a foreboding lump in her throat that fell down to join the flopping fish at the pit of her stomach. "Desino cohero!"

The desk burst into flames.

A/N srry this took so long but as u prob guessed ive been pretty sick & then vacay. i barely had time 2 rite this 1. srry 4 making u wait!!!! nxt 1 will be faster, i promise!! PLS R&R.


	18. Of Flies and Fireballs

Draco's fly was stuck. Again. Of course it was just his luck that the one day in class that they learned how to unstuck zippers was the one day that he decided to skip. Well, one of the many.

He took out his wand and did something his father told him never to do, namely pointing his wand at his other wand, so to speak. "_Ignis fatuus_." He nodded his head, satisfied that now his zipper appeared to be zipped. No one would know.

He walked down the hallway with a new spring in his step, a sort of jaunty swagger that made him look like he had been drinking a bit too much butterbeer. Now was his time to make his appearance, satisfy the masses, have swooning women falling at his feet…

He opened the door to the Charms classroom, prepared to be fashionably late, but instead almost got run over by hoards of students screaming for their lives, followed by a giant flaming desk that reared like an angry, flaming stallion.

A girl bumped into him, sending him sprawling to the floor just as a ball of fire the size of his head whistled over the crowd, a flaming wad of saliva from an angry camel.

"Oh my god, are you okay! Quick, hurry! We have to run before the desk catches us!"

He allowed himself to be pulled up, using gravity to make himself a bit heavier, since he was still a little bit sore about this girl ruining his brilliant entrance. "Oh," he said, standing tall like a prize-winning larch sapling. "It's _you_." He tried to wrench his arm free of Tru's grasp, sending her bag crashing to the floor. "What the–" He picked up one of the seemingly hundreds of boxes and tried to make out the writing–

The last thing he remembered was a hot blast near his ear, a shadow at his side, then… _darkness_.

Tru sat next to Draco's hospital bed, clutching her bag nervously. The box corners made strange indents in her stomach and she felt a little bit like Swiss cheese must feel when they poke those holes in it, but she didn't dare move. He had been in a coma for more than a day, and he had recently been showing signs of waking up.

His violet petal eyelids fluttered open, he gasped.

Tru gasped back.

His hands went convulsively down to the edge of his sheets, and he pulled up and peered down into the circus-like tent. "I don't have any pants on," he said, in a mournful tone.

"Um," Tru said.

He turned his fiery eyes on her accusingly. "You took my pants, didn't you?"

"Um," Tru said.


	19. Pants of Fate Pt II

Tru was alarmed. She had imagined that this would be a relatively painless, easy explanation. She would remind him about the numerous bursts of flame that they had been transversing, or rather that she had _rescued _him from, really, like some kind of super smart, protective dog, and he would understand the danger, the intense danger, of tripping over your own pants when they start to come down like that and recognize that what Chastity (oh, the irony) did was purely for safety's sake! Then, then, well she wasn't sure what would happen. But he would definitely not remember to ask about where the flames had come from—

Draco's gaze became a physically thought-interrupting force.

"Um," she said.

The gaze narrowed. "If you say that one more time without an explanation, you will be physically incapable of ever saying that again. And I certainly hope you know sign language, because that is the way in which you will have to convey a _very good explanation for the disappearance of my pants._"

Tru swallowed down a noise, and glanced nervously about for the lady that had helped her carry Draco into the hospital. Obviously he had been very attached to those pants.This was going to be difficult. "I.. I don't know how to say this… " Draco was like robot who's emotional capacity was limited to rage. He had laser eyes. Tru's mouth was too dry to say more than the danger-word, so she wordlessly reached into her bag for…

The girl was attempting to hand something to him. He waited, allowed her to place it at his bedside. It seemed to be… some kind of twisted piece of metal. Was she insane? Was she tempting his rage?

"That's… that's all that was left," she squeaked. "I'm sorry." She made an awkward move as if to pat him consolingly on the leg, and then jerked her hand back, like a frog retracting its tongue. "Um."

Draco stared at the scrap of metal. Realization dawned like a new day. It seemed he had underestimated this girl. Her ditzy acting was superb, but she obviously had some sort of plan. Maybe she could be more than just a power tool against the Harry Potter.

Just then, he felt something s leek moving gently against, around his leg it felt like—a snake! He thrashed out of the bed, jumping to the corner of the curtained section of room before something occurred to him.

"Um," said Tru.


	20. Meeting Mr Leek

Tru's mouth would not close. It was like she had lockjaw. It was a good thing they were in the infirmary because maybe the nurse could give her a shot of whatever it was that cured lockjaw – what is lockjaw, anyway? Tru wondered, all the while staring, staring, staring.

"What the hell is your problem? Stop staring at it– me! Stop staring at me!" he screeched, turning around and cowering.

Her mouth just wouldn't close. But before she could turn around and run open-mouthed out of the room, the thing wriggling in Draco's bed sheets caught her eye. "Ugnk!" she exclaimed! A twenty-foot long snake thrashed beneath the egg-shell white covers, rearing its emerald head and swishing its tail. It stared back at Tru with ruby eyes and swished its quartz tongue.

"Wh–" Draco turned and buried his head in the corner, pulling down his shirt in the back. "What are you doing?" His voice rose to an octave she had never heard before. "That's– that's a basilisk!!!"

"What's a basslick?" Tru asked, her mouth feeling funny saying the word.

The snake's head snapped around to her and it said very clearly in a pompous voice, "It's basilisk, idiot. Do you think I lick fishes?"

"Oh, oh," said Tru, eyes widening. "Oh, I would never suggest that you lick fishes, Mr. Bazlack."

"Basilisk."

"Boozlap."

"Basilisk."

"Basil Leek."

The snake sighed and closed its eyes. "Forget it." Then it opened its eyes and moved closer to Tru, blinking rapidly. "Wait, how is that you're still alive?" He stared at her intently with one eye widening his eyelid as far as it would go.

"Um," said Tru, "I shouldn't be alive?"

"Well, you should be dead, seeing as how when I look at people they, well, die. That's why I'm called a basilisk."

She looked over to where Draco stood standing in the corner, like a toddler who wet himself and whose teacher forced him to wear the dunce hat in the corner as punishment. He trembled when she spoke to him. "Is that why you're over there in the corner?"

Draco whimpered something unintelligible, but she thought she heard "cold" and "pants" and "mommy."

"I'm sorry mister Leek, I don't know what's gotten into him."

"Oh, that's all right. I expect this sort of behavior from people."

"How's that?"

"Well, I am the king of all snakes and everything. It's pretty great, really. You wouldn't believe how easy it is to get what you want when you can kill people just by looking at them."

"That's not very nice, killing people," Tru said.

"Please make it go away," Draco whimpered. "Please, all I want is some pants."

"Mister Leek, I'm afraid my friend is offended by your presence." She whispered, "I think he has some deep-rooted psychological problems with phallic symbols."

"I quite understand. Well, I'd best be getting on my way. It was nice meeting you." Before he slithered off, he loomed close to her face again, blinked several times and tried widening them again, to no effect. Tru smiled goofily.

The snake closed the door after him. Draco spun around and grabbed the bed sheets, but they wouldn't come free, as Madam Pomfrey was a prize-winning sheet-tucker. He spread what he could grab of the sheet in front of him. "What. The. Hell. Was. That?"

"What?" Tru asked inquisitively.

"The– that– the basilisk. How– are you not– dead?" It was his turn to stare at her openmouthed.

Tru shrugged. "I don't get it."

"The basilisk's look kills everything. Birds burst into flame when one is near." He gaped at her. "And you were hissing at it. You can talk to snakes?"

"Why, can't everyone?" Tru said, her mouth forming an 'o.'

"No, no, hardly anyone can. The only person I know that can is–" His face darkened like a storm front charging overhead a nightmarish picnic.

"Who?" Tru asked, her heart beating inside her ribs like a trapped mouse.

"Potter."

"Harry?" Tru asked quizzically. "Harry!" And all the moments where she felt the connection between the two of them came flooding back and she felt warm and comfortable inside, like someone had tucked her soul in bed and kissed it goodnight. She gasped.

A sudden loud noise drew their attention to the window.

"Um," Draco said.

A/N: thx 4 the reviews guyz!!! plz r&r some more:DDD i work relli hard on thse chappies


	21. Cold Prince's Truth

The loud noise was the entire school of Hogwarts, as they peered like a hungry pack of jackals, through the window at a confused looking Tru, and a pantless Draco. Then they begin to laugh, simultaneously, and their joined together into a single breathy _hhhha__… _ and then it was no laughter at all, but a hiss! It was the hiss of a gigantic snake! Draco felt his palms bead with sweat, and the embarrassed heat rushed from his face as his blood drained. Where was it?

He spun in a wild circle, only to find, as he turned back to Tru, that she was the snake! Her eyes were slits and she fell/lunged forward at him, hissing that terrible laugh, and dripping poison from her nose like melted ice cream.

"Stay away from my pants!" Draco hoped that the shrillness of his noise would be closer to the incompressible hissing noises that Tru was speaking in. She seemed to be coming at him in slow motion, but Draco could not move to get away, and the closer she got the more slowly she moved until her face only seemed to be inches away and—

Draco thrashed, opened his eyes, to find Tru hovering only inches above his face, looking concerned. Even worse, she had her wand out, pointed uncertainly in the general direction of his head. He struggled to remain calm, and summoned his best, coldest, sneer tone. "What are you doing?" It was cold enough to frost glass, sharp enough to then break it into a thousand icy glassy pieces, like a glass filled with ice and then dropped.

Tru shot backwards several feet. "Um. I was just, um. You fainted, and I thought, maybe, I could, with magic—"

"You—" Whatever Draco might have come up with to express his abject horror at Tru pointing a wand at his head, under any circumstances, was cut short by the entrance of Madam Pomfrey. She took one horrified look at the situation, and promptly had Tru by the ear and out the door, with a growling Chasity in pursuit.

"You! Get back in bed! You'll catch your death—" the door cut off what was likely going to be quite a tirade, as long as a giraffe's neck.

Tru, propelled by Madam Pomfrey's parting shove, collided heavily with three students coming up the corridor to the infirmary. Her wand narrowly avoided jabbing one of them, and ended up merely brushing by Ron's side.The hands that caught her were familiar, and she looked up to see Harry, Ron, and Hermoine. She was only able to hang limply for a moment.

"Oh good, Tru, you're alright! Someone said that you were here. You weren't hurt in the, um.."

"Flaming rampage," supplied Hermoine.

"Hm," said Harry, who had been looking for something more tactful. "… Rampage. Were you?"

Ron's head belatedly sprouted green foliage. It looked like…carrot tops.

A/N: hppy thanksgiving every1! Pls review, i 3 u all.


	22. the soul

By the end of the week, Tru had her own chair in the infirmary. It was small and pink and maybe a little too short for her, because her knees were always higher than her hips, but it also had her name written in large rhinestones and glitter on the back of it. She wasn't quite sure where it had come from.

She was sitting by Harry's bed today. "I'm really sorry, Harry, about, you know–"

If he had had eyes, she was sure that he would have stared back at her sullenly. But teapots don't have eyes– Tru thought it would be very frightening if they did, always staring at you while you tried to pour yourself a cuppa, glaring disapprovingly as you added lots of milk and ten sugar cubes. She thought she saw one of Harry's pale pink roses open slightly in a very aggressive way.

"Well, um. I'll just be going over here. I hope you feel better soon, Harry. Oh, and I'm sorry about trying to pour out some of your– tea, after, you know, changing you into a… well, yeah."

She got up and inched away, until she was safely around the wheeling curtains.

She raced down the stairs with long gazelle legs and nearly collided with Ron who was eating his morning pastry. He flinched away from her, still looking a bit orange and more carrot-like than usual. Pressed up against the opposite wall of the empty hallway and looking as nervous as a cornered vegetable waiting to be diced, Ron said, "How's Harry doing?"

"Oh he's– well, he's still, um… fine." She smiled at him hopefully.

"Right, er." He hurried off, walking backwards the first couple of paces.

Tru collapsed against the wall depressedly. She heaved a huge sigh; why was it that everyone was treating her so coldly recently? It wasn't as if she could help the fact that she had so many wands and didn't quite yet know which one to use for each spell and exactly how to use them. If they were to blame anyone, it should be the education system for leaving her in the dark.

"Oh, poor, poor, Harry," she sighed, feeling the tears peeking out above her bottom lids.

She felt a sharp blow to her out-stretched ankle and then a loud, "Oof!"

"Oh!" she exclaimed. And before her brain could catch up, she said, "How are your pants?"

Draco, lying flat down on the floor, slowly turned his head to face her. She felt an icy chill, presumably from his gaze.

"Well," she said, looking anywhere but his hot-coal eyes. "They look fine." She reached a finger out to touch the edge of one cuff, but he pulled his leg away from her and struggled up. He stood there staring at her for a moment, looking like a puppy who has just been given a bath; to fill the silence, Tru said politely, "They're very nice pants."

"Stop staring at my pants!"

But now that he had screamed that, Tru couldn't stop staring. They were dark pants, with a crisp crease down the front of the legs. Proper trousers. Stainless. No discoloration from too many times in the washer (which, Tru mused, probably was because he didn't need to use a washer, being a wizard). Very dark navy, like the winter sky around midnight during a new moon.

Very unlike Harry's pants which were dark brown and ripped at the cuffs from too many days of mischief and covered in stains from butterbeer spilled during bawdy dinners with friends. Homely pants, Harry had, comforting pants.

As Draco hurried away down the hall, Tru decided that there was a lot to be told from someone just by looking at their pants (unless they were a girl, in which case a lot could be told from their skirts – and even more if they weren't a girl but were still wearing a skirt).

She looked down at her own skirt.

**a/n**: plz plz plz r&r guyz!!!!!1 im so depressed that noone seems to lik me storry!!! plz?i will make you cookiez!


	23. Plagues

It was caught in reflection upon these various mysteries of life (what was the significance of pants, or the lack of them? Why didn't her parents ever tell her about magic? Where did that chair come from?) that Dumbledore found her. He peered down at her through his half-moon spectacles with concern.

"Ah, Miss Whelan! What a pleasure to see you."

Tru twitched out of her contemplative state to see Dumbledore's beard directly in her line of sight. She glanced hastily upwards, towards the face, where, she'd learned after her encounter with Draco, most people appreciate you addressing, when speaking. Still, she wondered: Did Dumbledore wear pants under his robes? She thought he must. But what they looked like remained a mystery. Did they have purple polka dots? What about little viridian turtles? Yes, she thought. They probably do.

"I quite understand that you're making lots of new friends," he cast a glance thoughtfully at the wide girth the passing students were giving them, "whose company is infinitely more preferable than that of an old man's. But really, you can hardly blame the educational system for not guiding you, if you do not even come to the lessons."

"What?" Tru thought the word meant to force its way out of her throat as a shriek, or a huge, tropical bird with a raucous and annoying voice, but instead it came out as a horrified whisper. "No! I—Professor, is this about how I call you Professor instead of Headmaster, because I'm sorry, it's just being around Harry he always calls you that, and—I've—you, I mean, you might not have found me in the infirmary—I should have realized that it wasn't an obvious place to check, even though they've made that nice chair for me, here, did you see it? You'd think I'd feel more at home here with the chair that they've put my name on and everything, but I don't, not at all, but I don't mean—oh please, don't send me back, Professor, I want to learn!"

"Oh dear, no one is going to send you back, Miss Whelan, not after we've spent so much time finding you. Although, it will be something of a waste, if you decide you are not interested in your lessons after all."

In her already emotional fragile state Tru found that she was in tears, and that the tears were tiny, colorful tree frogs that clung briefly to her cheeks and then sprang away, into Dumbledore's beard, and onto the walls. "But… I never knew that we were having lessons, did you ever say? Chastity snapped her jaws at one that came to close.

"Poison dart frogs," Dumbledore observed mildly, and shook out his beard. "I would not eat them, if I were you," he recommended solemnly to Chastity. "Although I'm not sure they'd have much effect, considering…"

Suddenly, a veritable flock of owls swooped down upon the swarms of frogs.

"Ah," said Dumbledore. "I suppose these are the owls I sent to you about our lessons." He glanced down at Tru, considering, "I suppose it's the charm still at work. Quite a remarkable spell, after all these years…"

Tru, on top of being massively relieved (the size of her relief was hard to imagine. It was larger than a truck, larger than a building, larger than the number 100,000, and, well, overall just rather substantial), began to feel uncomfortable, with all of these frogs squeezing their way out of her tear ducts, not to mention the owls fighting for perching spots on her shoulders, and Dumbledore staring at her in that misty, distant sort of way. Also, she felt peculiarly annoyed, a feeling she typically got only after being cut off midsentence. What could—

v-v-v-v-v-v_______________** MEANWHILE **_v-v-v-v-v-v

___________________________Somewhere.__Somewhere as dark as a shut closet in a quiet room.__ Somewhere heavy, heavy with the __earth,__ and a rank must. Somewhere, something foul was stirring restlessly, something which should not be stirring…_

A/n: i hope thats knot 2 much of a cliffhanger for u guyz. PLS keep reading! if ur reading and havent reviewed, pls do!!! even if u already hav, pls do so again! luv u all, hppy holidays!


	24. angel from heaven

Tru was dreading her private tutoring with Dumbledore. The morning of her first class (well, really probably more like her thirtieth, times however many subjects she was supposed to take) she had butterflies in her stomach, but not literal butterflies, like the poison dart frogs. Although, she mused to herself aloud as she ate her breakfast of toast lathered with jam and butter, she might prefer literal butterflies to metaphorical ones, because then at least she could smash and kill them by hitting her stomach. Metaphorical butterflies didn't go away until what they were fluttering about was resolved.

It didn't help her nervousness that the Harry and Hermione and Ron were all ignoring her and Harry still looked sort of pinkish and flowery depending on what angle she looked at him from and Ron was even still orange behind his ears. Hermione – she couldn't figure out why Hermione seemed to hate her so much. Tru had no more friends.

lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll Dumbledore's Office llllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll

"Well, Miss Whelan, it's good to see you finally here," Dumbledore said from behind his wide desk. In front of him was laid out a platter of plain toast and several glasses of water for breakfast, along with a great large bowl of lemon drops.

Tru scuffed her shoes.

"Now," he said at the same time as he clapped his hands. "Now, let us get to work."

A low table appeared in front of him, covered with a wide array of strange miscellaneous objects, including stuffed birds, metal rings, and mirrors.

"Please, I would like you to demonstrate for me where your current skills lie, so we know where to start." Tru stared back at him in confusion, so he continued. "I hear that you have some practice using offensive spells," he said and his eyes twinkled. "Show me."

"How, sir?"

"Practice on me." At her shocked and horrified expression, Dumbledore said, "Oh no, don't you worry. Trust me." He stood relaxed and placed his hands into his sleeves like she sometimes saw women in kimonos doing.

"Okay, sir, if you say so." Tru had her doubts; practicing spells on the headmaster of an internationally accredited school for witchcraft didn't seem like the brightest idea to her. She made up her mind to aim away from him, because he looked like a frail man, and she remembered what had happened in the wand shop when the wand got in her hands and also recently in Charms class.

She waved her wand and shouted in a clear voice, "_Expelliarmus!_"

A bright jet of light like a bolt of white-hot lightning during the middle of a huge summer thunderstorm shot out from the tip of her arm and raced not towards Dumbledore, but to the table that had mysteriously appeared a few minutes before.

But the spell hit a mirror! It rebounded back at Tru! And hit her in the middle of the forehead!

She fell backwards and the last thing she saw were stars floating around her head like in cartoons and strange squeaking noises.

lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll

She woke up with a huge headache, like a rhino had run into her head thinking she was a rival male rhino. "Uhhghhghghghhhhhhh," Tru groaned, holding her tender forehead in a pale hand.

"Why, hello there," someone said and that someone was not Dumbledore.

Tru jumped up in shock and surprise! Only to fall back down again when her head felt like it was splitting like a ripe melon. "aaaaaaaaaghaaahghghhhh," she screamed!

"Are you okay?" Several faces loomed into her vision and she screamed again, this time from fear and not from pain.

"What do you think, Pete?" one suave voice said dryly. "Do you think she looks okay?" The owner of this voice bent down in front of her and said, "You look like you just fell from the sky and hit several tree branches on the way down. Are you an angel?"

Tru blushed. The boy who was practically right next to her face was very handsome and had dark black hair that reached down to his chin and was very mussed up like he had just woken up from a night of troublemaking. His grey eyes glittered warmly at her.

"What's your name? I haven't seen you around here before. Are you a new student?"

"Yes," Tru said breathlessly.

Suddenly the boy with the dark hair fell to the side and another equally handsome boy swam into her blurred view. "What's your name?"

The boy on the ground protested and they wrestled some and another one of the boys who hadn't said anything yet helped her onto her feet. "Just ignore them," he said. "They're both idiots." He stepped away from her quickly as though he was embarrassed to be standing so close to this angel. He held out his hand. "I'm Remus. This is Peter," he said, gesturing with an open palm towards a squat boy with sandy hair who Tru realized was the first to speak to her; his face was bright red. "Their names aren't important."

"You wound us, Moony," one of the boys on the ground said, but Tru couldn't tell which one, because they were laying in a tangled heap like a pile of logs ready for a cozy fire.

Remus-Moony ignored them and said, "You're from Gryffindor?" his eyes caught on her tie that was colored with Gryffindor's colors red and yellow.

"Yes," Tru said, still breathless. She was trying to figure out what was going on, because she knew that she had never seen these boys before and she couldn't understand why because they were in the same house as she was. Suddenly one of the two boys who had spoken to her before looked up and she exclaimed, "Harry!"

He just stared back at her in confusion.

"Harry, who are these people?"

"I'm not–"

"She's obviously delirious," the other boy on the ground said to the boy that looked like Harry. "Probably from her fall from Heaven. Knocked all sense out of her." He turned to Tru, as though her were as eager to address her as a child is to get candy. "This is James, James Potter. He is a notorious ladies' man, so you'd better watch out."

James shoved over the only unnamed boy and said hotly, "I am not."

"Well, anyway, let's go back up to Hogwarts and get out of this cold," Remus said, taking her gently by the elbow and guiding her up the hill.

They all followed and when they got there they demanded that she tell them about who she was and how she got there, but Tru managed to convince them that she had been there all along and that they just hadn't noticed her until now, because she was worried that she might change the future if she told them that she came from the future, like that one story where the man steps on the bug and everything in the future changes. She worried that if she misstepped, Chas would no longer exist!

Since she didn't know how she'd gotten to the past, she didn't know how to get back, so she spent a few weeks hanging around with the group of four boys and they were fast friends, and they even let her join their group called the Marauders because she gave them the idea.

But one day, they were setting up a trap for when Snivellus came down to breakfast, and Peter shot a spell that went awry! It hit her in the middle of the forehead! Tru fell down and was unconscious before she hit the ground, and all the boys were panicking, but then her body disappeared and all that was left was a ring that had fallen from her hand!

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Tru woke up with a huge gasp of air and sat bolt upright, gasping. "Gaaaaahhahhahahughhhhh!" she said!

Dumbledore was at her side looking concerned. "Are you all right, Miss Whelan? Tru?"

"Yes," Tru said. "No. I don't know." And she started crying, because she realized that she would never see her good friends again because that was thirty years ago, and they were all gone forever or at least too old for Tru and would get arrested if anyone saw them hanging out even though they were just friends.

lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll _**MEANWHILE**_ lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll_**  
**_

_In a dark and vile place, the things that had been stirring stirred with greater intensity, freeing themselves from the bonds that so wrongly held them dormant. A hand struggled free and then a gasp of life!!!!!_

**A/N:** o no! wut is goin on?!?!!? read to ifnd out!!!!!! will tru ever see her best friends again? or will dey frever separated by da chains of time?!?!?!? PLZ PLZ PLZ KEEP REAIDNG MY STUFF!!! i luv evyr1 who reviews! R&R!!! PLZ! I PROMISE IT WILL GET EXCITING!!!! LIK, RELLI RELLI EXCITING!!!


	25. Desperate Passion

Tru was sobbing desperately. She'd finally found where she belonged, where everyone loved and accepted her for who she was, people who she could tell the complete truth to (with the exception of her history or anything about the world she came from), and now it was gone! Gone forever! And Harry, Ron and Hermoine didn't seem to like her at all, although maybe Ron was just still sour from the several hours he'd spent as a lemon… But no, he'd been rather cold to her since he'd been a carrot, and carrots aren't bitter _or _ cold!

Tru was vaguely aware of Dumbledore looking at her with concern, and handing her a handkerchief and she choked out through her sobs, "I—I'm sorry professor, I mean, Headmaster… I swear I won't make frogs again… I just.." She watched Dumbledore gently shake out the handkerchief. Several tiny rainbow scaled fish flapped onto the floor and began thrashing wildly for air. Tru felt like those fish, gasping, stranded without a lifeline. She'd never find them again, or if she did, they would have forgotten her, or be mad that she had been lying to them. Suddenly all her attention shifted as she felt something warm and wet slide along the length of her brow and nose.

Dumbledore was very very far away, and only appeared close. It was a fun house of mirrors and even though her eyes said she was right there, he must be across the hallway, because his voice was coming from so far away. Stupid wizards, she thought, stupid magic, always trying to trick me, hurt me. The wolves are my family, why did I…

"Tru." Dumbledore's mouth was moving. "Tru. Tru, you must tell me what happened, try to focus…" He was holding Chastity back with one hand, like it was nothing, though she was raging and howling to get to Tru. The howls were on a distant mountain, not a member of her pack… the marauders. Tru touched her forehead, the only place it didn't hurt, and he hand came back as bright as a flower. Suddenly she felt very angry about Tru. About Dumbledore. Her sister! He shouldn't be holding her sister back like that! And she snarled at him, feeling her rage grow and grow like Jack's beanstalk, higher and higher. His mouth was still moving, but she could hear nothing but a heavy pounding in her ears, like hands pounding on the door to her house when Chas shoved her into the closet. No!

She lunged for Dumbledore, teeth bared, magical rage crackling around her like jellyfish!

Dumbledore stood up straighter, and suddenly her foot was moving, she was down on the ground, face first into the slippery tear-fish that had just foiled her.

Suddenly, Professor McGonogal burst into the room! "Headmaster, Filch has extremely vital reports for you," and she stepped over Tru's prone form. "Zombies!"

Something clicked in Tru, like the barrel of an empty gun. The start of a thought…

a/n hay guys!! i kno its been awhile but i hope u remember wuts been going on bc the action is rlly picking up!! Ive tried to bring dwn the similies a bit since sum of u find dem hard 2 understand, but they r kind of my trademark!!


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